


The Inheritance

by ehmazing



Category: RWBY
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Future, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-07-28 20:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7655386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehmazing/pseuds/ehmazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[ABANDONED, sry…]</p><p>Ten years after the fall of Vale, Jaune Arc uncovers the Four Maidens conspiracy and finds himself caught between the hunters of Grimm, the hunters of humanity, and an unexpected ally.</p><p>(It's the Pyrrha Lives au)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

It took five days. Five days of waiting, a tight knot churning in his stomach, before an Atlasian soldier ducked into the medical tent with the orders that Jaune Arc was to report to his headmaster.

"What do they want with you?" Nora asked, catching his arm as he rose out of the chair at her bedside. Ren had been gone for the last hour, waiting in the ration lines. An hour wasn’t so bad; the queues seemed to stretch longer at every meal. The shelter had initially been set up as the temporary command center to regroup students and staff from the schools, but the other refugee camps surrounding them were growing so large that the whole area was becoming a vast city of tents. In the midst of the crowds, Nora seemed ever more desperate to keep both he and Ren close to her at all times. Jaune squeezed her hand and tried not to look worried.

"Probably just another witness statement. I think I've told the same story to twenty different officials at this point," he reassured her. "If I'm not back before Ren then you two can split my dinner, deal?"

Nora did not look any less reluctant to let go, but she released his hand nonetheless.

The soldier led him on the short walk to the staff quarters and saluted him before leaving him at the entrance. Jaune—unsure if he was supposed to answer the foreign flat-handed Atlas salute with a poor mimicry of it or use the typical Vale closed-fist—only managed to awkwardly nod his thanks before ducking under the canvas flap. When his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the tent's lone lantern, he couldn't help but gape at what he found.

Professor Goodwitch was writing a letter, which wasn’t an unusual sight. What made him stare was that she was using a stack of fruit crates for a desk. As silly as it looked, there was somehow an innate wrongness to it that made Jaune want to cringe. Only a week ago he would’ve laughed at the image of Glynda Goodwitch, impeccable, immovable, bent over an empty apple box like a starving playwright. Now he would’ve given anything to be receiving another detention in her well-kept office in the north wing, where every speck of dust seemed to know its place.

Goodwitch cleared her throat and interrupted his stupor. A fleeting look of discipline crossing her face, as if she knew what he was thinking and didn’t approve of it. This, at least, felt familiar. Jaune stood as straight as he could manage and waited for her to speak.

“I would offer you a seat, Mr. Arc, but it seems that we’re in need of more firewood than chairs these days,” Goodwitch sighed as she stuffed a few loose papers into a file. “I trust that you and your team have all been following doctor’s orders regarding your injuries?”

"Yes, Professor," he answered. "Ren's arm needed a cast but he's doing okay otherwise. Nora’s ribs are still giving her trouble."

"And yourself?"

Jaune swallowed the familiar pang of guilt in his chest.

"My injuries cleared up after one trip to First Aid, actually. They boosted my aura and it healed almost everything on its own."

"Really?” Goodwitch blinked at him, surprised. “Well then, you're very lucky. Having an aura that recharges easily is quite a beneficial asset to a hunter, especially with so little prompting from a medic."

She opened her mouth as if to speak again, but looked back down at her files, shuffling them absently. Jaune tried not to fidget as he watched her tap the folders on the desk to align the edges just so, only to drop the stack back down in defeat.

“I think you may know why I’ve called you here.” A raw edge crept into Goodwitch’s voice. “I apologize if I am too blunt, but I believe you should no longer be kept in the dark. This matter concerns you just as much as it does me. Please give me a moment to collect my thoughts on how best to brief you.”

She folded her hands, closing her eyes as if to concentrate on how to continue. Jaune felt a cold fear growing in him, numbing his hands and feet. He had never known Professor Goodwitch to be unsure about anything.

Finally, she began.

“I've just been informed that Miss Rose has given the Intelligence Bureau her official account of the events atop Beacon Tower.”

The knot in his stomach tightened like a noose. He did know why she'd called for him. He knew what she would say next.

"She saw Miss Nikos during her confrontation with the attacker. She witnessed Miss Nikos take a hit to the chest. Miss Rose was understandably quite shocked, and her reaction drew the attacker's attention. Miss Nikos took advantage of this to draw the weapon out and retaliate. Miss Rose then lost consciousness. Her uncle, Qrow Branwen, recovered her from the scene several hours later.

“I am sorry to tell you that although she managed to kill the woman controlling the dragon, Miss Nikos did not survive the battle.”

There was no moment of silence. The camp, overcrowded as it was, did not allow it. Even in the relative seclusion of the staff quarters Jaune could hear life going on outside Professor Goodwitch's ramshackle office: students complaining about the ration lines, generals arguing over which action to take next, soldiers' boots marching a staccato beat in the dirt, birds wailing their evening calls in the forest around them. His own heart, beating in his ears, chanting that he knew, had always known.

He broke the quiet that was not quiet and asked with as little tremor in his voice as he could manage,

“Can I—can we see her?”

“Unfortunately,” said Goodwitch, “that is impossible at the moment.” She set her glasses aside and rubbed at her bloodshot eyes. “Several days ago I was informed that all authority regarding the evacuation of Vale has been turned over to the government. Huntsmen Global Command is no longer in charge of anything but maintaining Grimm control outside the city limits, and we may only begin a counter-strike to take back Vale when the king’s High Council permits."

Though her voice did not change, somehow it was becoming harder to hear Professor Goodwitch. His pulse beat wilder and wilder, louder and louder.

"The Intelligence Bureau and the Counter-Terrorism department have also assumed command of the official investigation, and I have been denied access to any evidence they’ve found." Goodwitch exhaled hard through her nose. "Which includes Miss Nikos’ body.”

His hands were trembling, head ringing because he'd known, he'd already known all this time, why did he expect anything like a miracle, why did he expect her to be invincible, why did he hope—

“I’ve made requests, but my hands are tied with a great deal of red tape. The information I’ve been given you is all that I have. They have at least promised that her personal effects will be returned to her parents.”

Why did he still hope when he _knew—_

"Mr. Arc?"

Jaune opened his eyes. He didn't realize that he'd closed them, but Goodwitch had stepped out from behind her stacked crates and stood next to him now. Though she was several inches shorter than him, she had one hand firmly planted on his shoulder, steadying. Her eyes looked even redder and older up close.

"Let me walk you back to the medical tent," she offered, but with firm conviction that made it more of a command. "I'd planned to speak to all of your team members individually, but if Miss Valkyrie cannot walk then I will go to her. Unless you would prefer to stay here, then you may—"

"No." He cleared his throat, trying to ignore the sour taste filling his mouth. "No, I should—I should be there. I should be there with them."

She kept her hand on his shoulder as they ducked back outside. Coming from Goodwitch, it was a gesture too strange to feel comforting, but Jaune had no desire to tell her so. His body felt so heavy that each step was like agony; if he shook Goodwitch's hand off now, he might topple to the ground and never have the strength to push himself upright.

Suddenly, a hush fell over the camp. Over the tops of the trees lining the horizon a bright beam of light flashed, glowing eerily blue against the cluster of clouds bleeding rust and gold in the sunset.

And then came the howling.

"What's going on?" Jaune's heart jumped again, treacherously abandoning mourning for survival. The fear he felt in the tent returned, but with a fiercer tug at him, a desperate insistence digging into his very core that begged him to flee. It was a feeling that every student of a hunting academy knew well: Grimm were near, and they were frenzied. Though she surely felt it too, Goodwitch seemed completely calm beside him. She replaced her glasses on the bridge of her nose, glaring in the direction of the light.

"They've activated the gate. A smaller one for now, but I'm sure they'll finish the plans for the large one soon."

"Gate?" Jaune squinted, trying to see the source of the commotion. The howling had only grown louder and more dissonant, more desperate. It sent a chill down his spine.

"A massive forcefield, the same technology that was supposed to protect Unity Stadium. The government's new plan is that instead of continuing to lose hunters in an attack to retake the city, they're going to barricade the Grimm inside." Goodwitch pushed lightly on his shoulder and they resumed their slow march. "That horrid sound you hear is the beasts realizing they've been caged. With a full evacuation order in place, there will be no prey left for them in the city limits that the gate encloses. With time, their numbers will starve out, and that's when we hunters will have better odds against them."

Jaune stopped and turned to her.

"But Professor, that full evacuation order was only announced yesterday. There's still people fleeing Vale. How will they all get out, if…?"

Goodwitch looked down.

"The High Council," she said slowly, as if each word was venom on her tongue, "claims that they’re testing a new kind of forcefield. When the citywide gate is installed and complete, it will be able to sense humans and ordinary animals and let them pass through unharmed. Grimm, however, will touch it and receive a nasty shock.

“But," she met his eyes, gaze cold with fury, "the 'less-advanced' gate they've activated in the interim traps all forms of life."

Above the din of furious Grimm there came one scalding roar. Jaune felt his aura flicker in defense, shivering and trembling under his skin. _The dragon._

"The advantages, they told us," Goodwitch hissed, "would outweigh the cost."

Jaune could not move. Could not speak. Again he lost awareness of Goodwitch's presence until she touched him—her other hand balancing the first on his opposite shoulder—and called his name.

“Mr. Arc. I want you to know that I am going to reopen the school. Even if we must be moved from the campus, I won't let my students fall behind. Ozpin would not have stood for it.” She ducked her head so that he had no choice but to look into her eyes. "I don't care who stands in my way. The government, Global Command, I'll take them all on. For Miss Nikos was—” she swallowed hard, her pale throat tightening, “—an exemplary student. Her actions saved many thousands of lives. I won't let her be taken from us and accept it quietly.

“Listen to me, Jaune.” Goodwitch's grip was ironclad. “In these desperate times, we're in need of dedicated young hunters. If you're willing to continue down the path you have chosen, you will always be welcome at Beacon Academy.”

How long they stood there he didn't know. A minute, an hour, the rest of the night. But eventually Goodwitch released him, pinched the bridge of her nose hard, and stepped into the medical tent. Jaune hesitated at the entrance, unsure if he should try schooling his expression in front of Nora before Goodwitch delivered the news, or if it would be useless to hide from her and Ren. If he'd known, so would they.

There was another roar from over the trees. Whether it was his training or the power of an ancient Grimm, there was something inside Jaune that told him that the dragon's cries were different from the other monsters now pacing the walls of their new prison. It wasn't angry or confused like the smaller, younger Grimm. It was haughty. It was hungry.

It was not the cry of a caged beast. It was the call of an adversary, issuing a challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't written a multi-chaptered fanfic since 2009 so…here goes nothing……


	2. One

_There was fire. There was fire and a woman was in the center of it, rising from the ground as if she were born to walk on air instead of stone. Her eyes shone white-gold like the sun, piercing him with cold cruelty, with mocking pity. There was fire and the woman was its master, calling it to her hands as she looked down on him and laughed, taunting—_

“Hey Arc, I’ve got a challenge for you!”

Jaune jolted awake as a large object dropped onto the desk in front of him, barely missing his nose. On instinct he screamed and kicked away, chair rolling backward and banging loudly as it ricocheted off the filing cabinet behind him, almost jolting him off the seat and onto the floor. He threw out his arms to steady himself but only managed to bang his elbow off the same cabinet, yelping again as pain shot through the bone.

On the other side of the desk, his shift partner cringed.

“Oops,” Tee said. Even with the hall lights dimmed for the night shift, her electric blue hair shone like a wild, curly halo around her head. “Forgot you’re still doing that no-coffee-after-midnight thing.”

“I’m starting to rethink that diet,” Jaune groaned, massaging his sore arm. Tee shot him a apologetic smile before hopping over the swinging partition, her work shoes squeaking as she landed. She whistled as she settled into her own chair, flashing her badge at her monitor to sign back in.

“What, no apology?” Jaune griped, catching the brief flash of **TITANIA AZURE: AUTHORIZED** on her screen as it reloaded the files she’d been updating earlier in their shift. “No more respect for Arc and Azure, the Aurology A-Team?” He tapped his own badge to toggle his screen awake. The patient status monitors scrolled lazily before his eyes, confirming everyone checked in overnight was present and stable at the moment. It was Tee’s turn to make rounds at the next hour mark, but he didn’t expect she’d find anything different; most overnight stays in Aurology were blissfully uneventful and mind-numbingly boring.

“What? Never! We’ve been working the night shift for two years now! You know I wouldn’t break the A-Team bond!” Tee promised, swiveling around to face him, hands clasped in a pleading gesture. “I’ll buy you your next peanut butter sandwich to make it up to you. A sandwich _and_ carrot sticks, if you can fix my other problem.” She used her still-clasped hands to point to his side of the desk, where the object she’d dropped still laid.

Jaune picked it up. It was a medic’s log, one of the holotablets purchased from the department’s last big tech grant. Jaune remembered discussing it with Tee at that very desk, griping about how Atlas National Military Hospital never seemed to get much attention from the actual military until there was an election around the corner. This log was still new enough that the surface was unscratched, though one corner was a little dented and the screen covered liberally with fingerprints. As he pulled apart the two ends to turn it on, the light flickered weakly, displayed an error message, and promptly died.

“What did you do.”

Tee smiled weakly. “Uh, I may or may not have ignored what you said about restarting it more than three times in a row, and then punched it a little when it locked me out of the system?”

Jaune tried the log again. This time it got as far as loading a startup screen before informing him that it would require the password of a system operator to unlock.

“Tee,” he groaned, “it’s four in the morning. Tech Support doesn’t reopen until eight.”

“I know, I know!” She pouted. “But you’ve fixed it before when I dropped it down the stairs. And when I spilled antiseptic on it. And when I downloaded that virus that even Tech didn’t want to deal with. You’ve got the magic touch, Arc!”

“I have basic coding skills,” Jaune corrected her, “and you know your puppy face never works on anyone. You wibble your lip too much.”

Tee only wibbled it more. He rolled his eyes and made another attempt. Another warning that only a master password would reopen the log.

Jaune sighed and checked his watch, counting the hours until morning. Tee was the one who’d warned him that staying off caffeine would have consequences. _But being jittery enough to burst doesn’t help much either_ , he thought sourly as he rubbed his eyes and yawned, the haze from impromptu nap reluctant to wear off. He had come to terms with the fact that he simply was not designed for the night shift. Not for lack of trying over the years; staying awake all day to reset his internal clock, jogging around the halls to raise his heartrate, chugging weird herbal teas that other medics swore by. None of it worked. In the long run, coffee after midnight might be less detrimental to his health than the crick in his neck from falling asleep on the keyboard too many times.

A glance at his computer told him all patients were still accounted for and stable. He considered the broken log and gave Tee’s puppy face—now with even more lip wibbling—another consideration.

“I’m going to the break room to use the coffee machine,” he decided, rising from his chair and squeezing through the partition, slipping the log under his arm, “and after I fix this, we’re going to have a serious talk about your track record with these things.”

“I’ll get you double carrots!” Tee promised, gleeful. “No, triple! Just say the word, Arc, and I’ll grant any lunch wish you want!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he called over his shoulder, “just don’t punch any more screens while I’m gone.”

 

* * *

 

Though the night shift didn’t suit him, Jaune liked the hospital after dark better than any other time. There was a quiet sobriety to it, a respectful hush, as if the halls themselves were holding their breath in order not to wake the sleeping patients. For a while he was alone in many of the halls he passed through, but as he ventured further into the general wards other medics began to appear, nodding to him in greeting. Everyone on the night shift wore the same look of devoted vigilance, a iron confidence that should anything go wrong, they would be able to make it right by morning.

But maybe that was just the medics themselves. After nearly seven years in the country, Jaune still experienced some culture shock at how sure-footed Atlasians were. Thousands of years of learning to survive in the perpetual cold, locals said, had taught them to act quickly and decisively. Even in the modern age, common Atlasian mentality was that of eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It was a nation that bred hunters like no other.

The medical sciences followed suit. Research was always competitive and groundbreaking, Atlas’ technology making bigger strides in five years than other countries did in decades. Though it saw firsthand just how difficult the war against Grimm could be, the National Military Hospital still made its staff and patients feel like they were on the side that was turning the tide. Maybe that’s all it took, Jaune often thought when he saw remarkable recoveries from Atlas hunters on the brink of death. Maybe all you had to do was convince yourself that fighting and living were the same thing.

Other times he wondered if maybe the real reason was that Atlasians were just naturally aggressive, like the orderly sprinting down the hall outside of the break room, shoving Jaune into the wall as he passed.

“Whoa, watch it!” Jaune shouted, barely managing to catch Tee’s log as it sprang out of his grip. The orderly skidded to a stop, his shoes squealing on the floor.

“Sorry,” he panted, looking at Jaune like he was apologizing more out of habit than out of sincerity, “there’s a Level Ten who needs—wait,” he looked Jaune up and down, eyes lingering on the blue stripe on his badge. “Are you from Aurology? Can you do a resonance? A stabilization?”

“Yeah,” said Jaune, frowning. “But usually patients are stabilized in Emergency before we treat—hey!” Mid-sentence, the orderly seized him by the arm and began dragging him down the hall, speeding back into a run.

“We need a patient stabilized _now,_ ” he barked, leading Jaune roughly through the maze of halls that wound into the administrative departments. “They wandered into Records somehow, scared the security guard shitless. We can’t waste any time transferring them to Emergency. If their aura isn’t settled soon, there’ll be trouble. Can you handle a Level Ten?”

Jaune considered it carefully. Level Tens were elite hunters, the best of the best. Their teams, missions, and sometimes even names were kept under heavy guard by Huntsmen Global Command, who assigned them only to the most dangerous cases. In Atlas, a Level Ten was almost guaranteed to serve under Special Forces. It was rumored that they wouldn’t even let you apply for that corps unless you earned the number first.

The Aurology department primarily treated typical cases of mission damage: hunters who drained their auras too low to heal themselves without assistance, semblances that weren’t manifesting at normal strength, aura imbalance from an unsuccessful resonance with a partner. Stabilizing an aura and semblance that wouldn’t stop flaring after a hunt was a fix easy enough for Emergency. It was an issue that usually resolved itself with age and experience; Jaune didn’t think he’d ever had to use the procedure on any patient above Level Four. But he’d fixed far more serious problems in far more powerful hunters.

“Yeah,” he agreed, finally wrestling his arm free and jogging after the orderly, “I can handle it. How’d they get into Records, of all places?”

“No idea.” The orderly made a sharp turn at the end of the wing, flinging the door open to short, deserted hall. The only place in the hospital that wasn’t painted a stark white, Records looked much softer and calmer than the treatment wards.

Or would have, without the black footprints sizzling on the floor. Jaune could’ve mistaken it for tar had he not spent four years at Beacon washing it off his own shoes after every fieldtrip. His stomach turned at the familiar stench: soil that had turned to mud after being drenched with Grimm blood.

He gave the footprints a wide berth as the orderly led him to the room at the very end of the hall. There were at least two dozen medics clustered inside, scrubs and badges forming a rainbow of department assignments. His escort elbowed past a red Emergency surgeon, a green Physical Therapy nurse, a purple Intensive Care specialist, shoving himself and Jaune to the center of the crowd.

“Doctor Saffron,” he called, pushing Jaune toward a short woman pulling surgical gloves over her hands, “I have someone who can do the stabilization.”

Doctor Saffron turned to them. She was the oldest person in the room, her snowy hair pulled into a snug knot at the nape of her neck. Her skin was walnut brown, fixed in frown lines around the corners of her mouth and the center of her forehead. The skin under her eyes sagged, but her gaze was sharp and focused. Like the orderly, she glanced Jaune over and seemed to decide that he met her satisfaction, or at least would do for the time being.

“Be careful,” she ordered, pulling a surgical mask over her mouth and nose before handing him one to do the same. “Their aura is very powerful. We didn’t have time to look up their Global Command information, so I don’t know what the semblance is. But it’s definitely a dangerous one. Settling their aura down without triggering a reaction is your first priority. Got it?”

Jaune nodded, stomach knotting further as he got the sinking feeling that he was already over his head. But Saffron either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and turned to the crowd.

“Is this a circus ring or a hospital? All of you, get back!” The other medics scattered at once, some retreating into the corners, a few resigning themselves to hanging in the doorframe, hoping to be useful. Saffron charged ahead, and with the room cleared Jaune got his first glimpse of the hunter at last.

They were slumped against some Records employee’s desk, their upper body swathed in a hooded green cloak. The muddy footprints he’d followed down the hallway ended at the bottom of two brown boots, the joints reinforced with tarnished plates. Their legs were coated up to the ankles in the sludge, pungent enough to make Jaune gag even with the mask on.

As he knelt down beside them, he could sense why a stabilization was needed. Though they have doubtlessly come from a draining fight, the hunter’s aura was still at its peak, making the very air around them feel unbearably hot. As he tried to assess the source of their injury, a hand crept out from beneath the cape, twitching as it found the surface of the floor. With a low moan, the hunter tried to push themselves more upright.

The second they spasmed from the effort of it, a steel filing cabinet in the corner of the room hurled itself at the ceiling.

Saffron swore, flattening herself to the ground. The spectators screamed, fleeing into the hall. The orderly who’d found Jaune began hastily sweeping loose objects off tables and pushed lighter furniture into the supply closet, a safety precaution learned from necessity by anyone who dealt regularly with unstable semblances. Jaune immediately slid his arm behind the hunter’s back and helped them sit up as best he could, already feeling sweat begin to slide down his neck from being this close to the source of the unnatural heat. No other cabinets flew when he moved them, but the receptionist’s desk shuddered and groaned like its legs were trembling. He hoped that it’d go unnoticed in the commotion, but of course a young intern spotted it and yelped. Everyone was talking at once.

“Holy shit, are they telekinetic? What are the rates of that semblance, one in a hundred-million? Special Forces shouldn’t even recruit people that dangerous—”

“No, it must be some side effect of the aura overload, with that runoff heat they’ve got to be something with fire. I’m worried there are old gas lines in this wing that’ll blow if—”

“Will somebody get the biohazard guys in here already? Once that mud dries the blood will dissolve and get into the air circulation—”

“I don’t care what it takes, find their goddamned check-in time! When I find out who let them slip into this wing I’m going to—”

Saffron ignored them all as she crouched at the hunter’s other side, wedging an arm between their back and the desk to support them as Jaune had done.

“You’d better stabilize fast,” she barked, “or they’ll kill us before _this_ kills them.”

With her free hand, she drew back the edge of the cloak.

Wedged in the hunter’s lower right side was a long, bony spike. Whether it had been a tooth, claw, or piece of plating Jaune couldn’t tell, for it was spewing a black cloud of gritty smoke that obscured the end protruding from their torso. Like all parts of a dead Grimm, it was dissolving into the air, leaving no remains behind. But when it was gone there would be nothing stopping the hunter’s open wound from bleeding out. Their aura had flared in response, trying to heal the flesh around it, but if it succeeded before the spike fully dissolved, Grimm matter would be trapped in their body. They’d be poisoned immediately, death certain, swift, and agonizing.

It was an ugly wound, but Jaune had seen many like it. He took a breath to steady himself.

“Hey,” he said gently, even though he doubted his patient was in any place to understand him. “I’m going to resonate with you, okay? My aura’s going to stabilize yours so we can get that thing out. It’s a basic procedure, you’ve definitely felt it before. It’s going to be a little intense with your aura flaring this much, but it’ll be fast. I’ll start in three…”

He moved his hand on their back to rest between their shoulder blades, placing the other at their forehead, fingertips pressed to their brow under the hood.

“Two…”

He readied the incantation in his head, the old words as familiar as prayer.

_“One.”_

 

* * *

 

Aura resonance took years to master. Even the simplest, briefest connection used to unlock a child’s could backfire dangerously if done wrong. The more powerful aura would consume the other, damaging it beyond repair. It was a dangerous, finicky science, where even experts could be proven wrong with one unusual case. On bad days at the hospital, Jaune felt at times that he’d gone through years of rigorous training just to learn that, surprising no one, there was no way to reasonably predict how two souls would interact.

Stabilization was one of the simplest and safest methods of resonance. Unlike one aura unlocking another or two auras resonating in battle, there was no exchange of power to steer things awry. You simply had to synch your aura to another’s, like taking a breath at the same time. The method was often taught in combat schools as the first resonance exercise between partners, and it was one of things medics learned in their basic training. Jaune was fairly sure he could stabilize an aura in his sleep. He’d probably done it more times than he could count.

None of those times could compare to this.

It was like trying to resonate with a hundred people—no, a thousand. This wasn’t one aura, it was countless threads of different auras tangled together in an impossible knot, and the second they found Jaune’s soul they twined around it like weeds choking water away from a root.

He fought the instinct to snatch his hands away at once. The innate _wrongness_ of this person’s soul was palpable, like the fleeting burn from resting your hand on a hot stove. He caught Saffron frown and ask him a question, but the desk began shaking again and the crowd’s frightened cries drowned her out. Jaune shook his head, his pulse pounding in his ears.

“It’s fine,” he said, partly to Saffron, partly to the hunter, and partly to himself. “They’re—they’re more powerful than I thought. But I can do it.” He pressed harder at the hunter’s back, ignoring how their soul felt like a nest of snakes writhing under their skin, making his flesh crawl. “I can do it,” he repeated, squeezing his eyes shut.

The second resonance was even worse. The heat from the hunter’s mystery semblance seeped into him like molten metal poured into his veins. He’d dealt with difficult auras before, but this one was more than unwilling to stabilize. It was like the hunter’s soul was instinctively defending itself from him, refusing any interference.

 _I’m not trying to fight you!_ he thought, gritting his teeth. _I’m trying to help you!_

Thought it felt like being picked apart at the seams, he let the thousand-in-one soul wind around his, prodding it like an animal sniffing the air. The heat lessened a little as Jaune slowly increased the resonance, pausing every time the supply closet door rattled or the hunter let out a shaky breath, their body quivering under Jaune’s hands. He untangled the knot one string at a time until he came to a single aura at the center, the thread holding all of it together, that at last curled around his and calmed down.

Jaune uttered the finishing incantation and let go.

The fatigue hit him like a sledgehammer. He barely made it to his feet in time to escape the rush of people surging forward to assist Saffron with the wound, all donning masks as the Grimm bone began dissolving ever more rapidly. The orderly who brought him there caught his arm as he stumbled near the door.

“Whoa, you okay?” he asked, trying to help Jaune regain his balance. But the floor pitched beneath his feet as the hunter cried out, the very walls of the room shaking as Saffron removed the last part of the spike. Hands glowing with an orange light, she obliterated it with a chant he knew was based on magic so old that no one really knew what the words meant anymore, just that they still worked.

Jaune became dimly aware that his cheek was pressed against the tile. The orderly was shaking his shoulder.

Before the world went black, the crowd shifted enough to uncover the hunter again, their head still shrouded in green wool. But from this angle, Jaune could finally see beneath it.

The hunter had no face.

 

* * *

 

When he came to, there was a blurred, blue-tinted shape filling his vision.

“Look, there’s no way they were telekinetic. There’s only been, what, fifty of them in all of recorded history? Even less than that! I’m betting it was a tectonic semblance, something with earth energy. How else would they make the whole building shake? And they couldn’t just—hey, he’s up!”

The shape finally rearranged itself into Tee.

“You’re awake!” she exclaimed, the volume of her voice making his head throb . She hauled him into a sitting position, thumping him on the back when he groaned. “You took so long to get back that I thought you’d ditched me, but then there’s a small earthquake and five minutes later, they wheel you back on a gurney! Can you imagine how freaked out I was?”

“Same here,” echoed a blur at his left. Jaune blinked and the blur became Pippa, his replacement for the morning shift. Her twin carrot-orange braids swung as she bent over to peer into his eyes, gently pulling at his eyelids with her fingers to check his pupil size. “I came in just as you were delivered by some guy from Trauma who babbled something about resonating with a Level Ten and raced off again! The entire Aurology staff has been gossipping, no one knows what’s going on. Oh good, you’re concussion-free.” She straightened up, satisfied with her inspection.

“Now, give us the facts! We want to be the first to hear from the source,” Tee chirped, pulling him down from the gurney. She wedged herself expertly under his shoulder to help him trudge to the desk, a maneuver they used on patients. Carefully, Tee eased him into his chair while Pippa maneuvered a juice box into his hand.

“Can I breathe first?” Jaune groaned, trying and failing to punch the straw through the foil-covered slot. His coworkers glanced at each other.

“No,” they agreed.

He knew that they wouldn’t believe him. It still hurt, though, to see the looks on their faces when he finished the tale.

“A aura that defended itself?” Pippa frowned as she crossed her arms. “I’ve encountered some unwilling ones—a lot of unwilling ones—but never anything that tried to fight me. Are you sure they weren’t just too powerful for you?”

“I’m sure.” Jaune scratched his neck. “Look, I hate to say it, but other auras don’t overpower mine. Ever.”

Pippa looked like she was about to retort, but Tee cut in, “No, it’s true. I was his partner during basic training, and resonating with him was like getting hit by a truck.” She turned back to Jaune. “And you’re saying this Level Ten not only didn’t stabilize with you, it _resisted?_ That’s—” Her eyes grew wide. “Arc, that’s terrifying.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Jaune paused to finish the juice box. “I’m more scared of the earthquake. I thought the shaking feeling was just me falling on my face, but you said the whole hospital felt it?”

Both nodded. “It felt like the building shivered,” Pippa said, glancing nervously at the ground. “Listen, if they ever try to bring Special Forces in here, I’m not touching them. It was scary enough when that Level Six backfired on me and vaporized the curtains. Now I find out that stabilizing a Ten can knock you out cold for an hour? No thanks!”

Jaune opened his mouth, and then checked his watch. It couldn’t be.

“Tee, what time did I leave the desk? I wasn’t out that long, was I?”

She answered, “When Pippa came in you’d been gone for half an hour already. They brought you in around five, but I don’t know what time you passed out. It’s six-thirty now, past the end of your shift.” She patted his shoulder sympathetically. “You’ll be able to claim ‘Level Ten emergency’ as overtime, I’ll bet.”

“Of course you will. I’ll vouch for it.”

Jaune jumped the sudden voice behind them, the juice box flying out of his hand. It landed with a dull clatter on the floor in front of Doctor Saffron, standing at the desk. She’d changed into clean scrubs, no mud or blood in sight. Jaune scrambled to his feet.

“What’s the status? Did infection take hold? Is their aura flaring again? Has anyone else figured out why it was splintered like—”

Saffron held out a hand and he clamped his mouth shut.

“Easy now!” she chuckled. “Status is stable. We monitored for evidence of infection before their discharge, but there were no signs that any of the Grimm poison was able to take root. Their aura was completely stabilized thanks to you, Mr. Arc.” She smiled warmly and shook his hand with a powerful grip. “Good work. Now if you’ll excuse me, ladies, could I borrow my assistant one more time?”

Tee and Pippa offered him broad smiles and thumps on the back as he left the desk to follow Saffron to the end of the hall. She used her badge to open an empty treatment room and ushered him inside.

“Now, Arc,” she said, taking a seat in one of the visitor chairs, “have you ever worked with a Level Ten before?”

So the jig was up.

“No.” Jaune twisted his hands behind his back nervously and began to babble. “I’m sorry, I know I should’ve said that when I arrived. I assisted with two Level Eights who’d had a bad resonance a few months back, and I thought a Ten wouldn’t be too much harder than that, and the Trauma guy who grabbed me made me think that you couldn’t waste time finding someone else—”

“You’re not in trouble, Arc,” Saffron assured him. “In fact, I highly recommend you apply to work with higher Levels from now on. I tried to stabilize the patient myself when I arrived on the scene and had to stop almost immediately. I feared I’d damage my own aura if I continued.”

Jaune’s eyes widened.

“Did it feel…strange?” he asked, voice nervously hushed. Saffron nodded. “What do you think was wrong with them? I don’t think I can do it, but Doctor Civiz will be in soon and she can try something more advanced, maybe a restoration.” The possible problems and solutions ran through his mind rapidly, his brain eager to have an interesting case again. “Or maybe they need another all-out resonance, if this was caused by a backfire from their partner. Or maybe we could get help from—”

Saffron put up a hand again. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Arc. You see, there’s a certain level of discretion involved with Level Ten affairs.”

She pulled something from the bag slung over her arm and handed it to him. It was Tee’s broken log.

“You dropped this when you fainted in Records,” she explained, “and I took the liberty of finding a Tech Support intern to enter that missing password. In the files, you’ll find a non-disclosure agreement. Sign it as soon as possible and submit it to me. But I ask you to read everything in the agreement very carefully, and take your pledge seriously.” She nodded at the door. “I’m sure you’ll get a lot of questions from your department, but you must remember the National Hospital is still part of the military. We respect the chain of command above all else, and must understand our place at the bottom of it.”

With that, his surge of energy from thinking of how they could fix the hunter’s broken aura dissipated and the tiredness slunk back in. Jaune chastised himself for thinking he’d be allowed to do anything important; of course the hospital would go to any lengths to cover up faults in Atlas’ Special Forces agents. He tried not to sigh as he tucked the tablet under his arm, trailing behind Saffron as she made to leave the room. Well, at least he’d have a chance to make the best of it.

“Are these agreements are, uh, typical protocol for Special Forces?” he asked Saffron as she led him back into the hall. “Because if you think I can work on more Level Tens, I should probably get a head start on the paperwork.”

“Sometimes,” Saffron shrugged, about to turn and go back the way she came, “but it’s standard procedure for international cases like these.”

Jaune stopped short.

“International cases?”

Saffron frowned at him. “Yes, Arc. I told you earlier we monitored them before their discharge. That Level Ten was already picked up and transferred to their handlers in Vytal. Their evacuation unit arrived at the wrong wing, which is why they showed up in Records instead of Emergency.”

“But that’s insane.” Jaune felt his curiosity returning, but with a horrified twist. What kind of high-Level hunter evacuation unit, even a Vytalian one, made such a huge mistake? The Level Ten was lucky they weren’t discovered in Records already dead. “Why would the airship drop them off alone with an injury like that? How did they even walk from the roof to the second floor? And where was a Vytalian hunter fighting this far north with fresh mud all over—”

“I have no idea, Arc,” Saffron interrupted. As her annoyance grew, her frown lines deepened, pinching her face into a sharp mask. “But like I said, if you read through that form, you’ll learn that neither of us are allowed to ask those questions, and we are certainly not to expect answers.”

And with that, she left him.

 

* * *

 

On the train home, Jaune watched the sun rise and felt more awake than he had all night.

Weiss had bragged long ago, in one of their many petty group arguments over which homeland was the best, that Atlas sunrises were the most beautiful on earth. “It looks like fire melting the snow,” she’d said, somehow managing to sound both nostalgic and snobby about it in the way that only Weiss Schnee could. But once he moved north, Jaune learned she was right. Every morning he pressed his forehead to the icy train window and watched the light spill between the mountains in washes of red, pink, and blue. Sometimes after rough nights at work, it was only thing that cheered him up.

This morning, however, as he gazed at the clouds colored like puffs of flame he could only think of that horrible, all-consuming heat of the hunter’s soul, rent in thousands of pieces.

He’d completed the non-disclosure form and signed it, the file saved and ready to be sent to Saffron with the tap of a finger. But then he read it over again, picking apart the sentences he was binding himself to.

_—shall not seek further information on past medical history or subsequent treatments—_

_—accept exclusion from all consultations on treatments unless contacted by patient’s nation of origin or appointed representative of Huntsmen Global Command—_

_—will not contact patient directly to discuss, offer, or deliver aid in the following forms—_

Nothing about what to do with your concern that someone may die from having an aura like a five-headed Taijitu trying to consume its own tail.

He drummed his fingers against the edge of the train seat, trying to put it out of his mind. The doctor said the hunter had been stabilized and discharged, so maybe their Vytalian handlers knew about their condition. Or maybe they didn’t. Jaune tried not to think about an evacuation airship exploding over the very mountains he’d been gazing at.

There was another bad feeling he couldn’t shake: that empty space under the hunter’s hood. No, not empty. There had been something there, a haze like a cloud of mist or the air wavering above the concrete on a hot summer day. Try to make out what it was, though, felt like trying to see pictures in static, or trying to remember someone’s face in a dream.

Unbidden, his own most frequent and most hated dream chose that moment to recross his memory.

_There was fire. There was fire and a woman was in the center of it, rising from the ground like she were born to walk on air instead of stone._

If he lowered their aura to a resting point, Jaune realized, fear growing in the pit of his stomach, how could there still be enough power to manifest a semblance that shook a four-story building? What kind of semblance could hide faces, create heat, and move objects all at once? And what kind of hunter was taken to a hospital far from their assigned territory, delivered without warning, and discharged before anyone had the chance to ask questions?

He raised his head from the window. The hunter had been discharged. Discharged patients were given records.

Records that staff had access to.

He snatched Tee’s log and hurriedly typed in the code from his badge to open the main patient database, flicking past the **JAUNE ARC: AUTHORIZED** notice to hunt for the discharge listings. At first he despaired he might never find the right file. He didn’t know when exactly in that lost hour the hunter had left, meaning he had to open almost everything between five and six am. After a few minutes of picking through, he gave up trying to read every line and started skimming for Level numbers. A Six at 5:24. A Two at 5:31. A Three at 5:35. A Ten at—

Jaune barely muffled a triumphant shout, the few other passengers on the early train giving him withering looks for disturbing the morning quiet, and opened the file.

The first portion was a description of the injury. No frills, not even a mention that they’d found the hunter in Records. The spike was described as a fang, species unknown; unsurprising, as it had dissolved too much to be properly identified. The file confirmed Saffron’s statement that there was no evident poison in the hunter’s system, and the aura trouble was briefly summarized as “overactive healing properties and typical semblance distress response.” A short account of the treatment followed, naming Saffron and himself as the head of the operation.

Finally, near the very end, he found what he’d been looking for: the Huntsmen Global Command profile.

There was no photo, which didn’t surprise him. But Jaune was still taken aback at how little else was listed. There were so many black censor marks that it looked less like a profile and more like the magazine pages his sisters’ kids used to make collages. Even the bare essentials were hidden:

> **NAME:** CLASSIFIED  
>  **HGC LVL:** 10  
>  **WPN:** CLASSIFIED  
>  **SMBLC:** CLASSIFIED  
>  **ASSIG:** CLASSIFIED

Saffron was right. He wasn’t going to get answers. Frustrated, he reopened the non-disclosure form and hit SEND, punching the light screen and feeling only slightly guilty about it.

The sun had risen fully now, the glare from the snow bright and blinding as it leaked through the train windows. The conductor’s voice came through the speaker system, grainy and groggy with sleep, announcing his stop was next.

Just as he was about to close the tablet, Jaune had an idea. Quickly, he erased his badge number from the database login. It had been a long time since he tried something like it, but Tee was right: his coding did have a bit of a “magic touch.” After making a few modifications to the high-level account Saffron’s Tech intern had unknowingly gifted him with, Jaune held his breath as the loading wheel spun.

**SYSTEM ADMIN: AUTHORIZED**

At first, it didn’t look like much had changed. Though the semblance was still hidden, Jaune found that he was granted permissions to view a little more of the hunter’s medical history—most of it the usual injuries sustained by any hunter on active duty, but in far greater frequency—and not much else. It seemed like the hospital really was as low on the chain of command as Saffron had said.

The train slowed to a stop as he scrolled back up to the Global Command profile, pausing as he caught an odd mistake.

> **NAME:** CLASSIFIED  
>  **HGC LEVEL:** M  
>  **WPN:** CLASSIFIED  
>  **SMBLC:** CLASSIFIED  
>  **ASSIG:** VALE - OPERATION EQUINOX

Jaune may never have gotten one, but he knew how Global Command rankings worked. All hunters were assigned a number based on their field tests, most earning only a Level One or Two right out of school. As they improved in the field, hunters moved up the ladder. The higher the Level, the more dangerous the missions—and the more reward to collect. The average hunter ranked at a Four or Five by the time they turned thirty, Six or Seven if they were ambitious or especially talented. It was rumored only a few hundreds existed above that.

If Eights and Nines were a rarity, Level Tens were practically gods. He hadn’t questioned the orderly when he told him the emergency patient was a Ten. The flying filing cabinet and hospital-wide earthquake had given him enough proof to believe it.

But there was no Level M.

Jaune closed the log and shoved it back into his bag as the train doors opened, steam billowing where the warm air of the car met the cold wind. Why would Command bother to list a real ranking in the public hospital records and a fake one for the administrators? If they were trying to downplay the hunter’s power, it would be easy enough to call them a Seven or Eight in both files. The fear stabbed at him again, thoughts swirling like a whirlpool in his head.

 _There was fire. There was fire and a woman was in the center of it_.

He shook his head, tugging his hat lower over his ears. The train rattled away from the platform as he picked his way down the station steps, boots crunching against the thin ice that had formed overnight. _It doesn’t matter,_ he told himself as he started in the direction of his apartment. _You saved a life, had your ego wounded by a weird aura you couldn’t handle, signed your life away to your job even more than you already have, and you need a coffee_. _Let the Level Ten get back to whatever gross, toothy Grimm they were wrestling in the mud._

 

* * *

 

As it turned out, a coffee was exactly what he needed to clear his head. Almost as soon as he put his mouth to the rim of his mug, Jaune realized the fake Level wasn’t what he should have worried over in the file. The “M” had only distracted him from the other line:  

> **ASSIG:** VALE - OPERATION EQUINOX

He tried every possible hack he could think of to try and see if anything would change it, lift a security wall, open some hidden virtual door that would reveal another entry nestled inside. But even after refreshing the page until his mug went cold, the city still appeared on the screen.

Surrendering to exhaustion at last, Jaune drew his blinds shut against the glare of daylight and crawled into bed, setting his alarm for a morning that would begin in the late afternoon. He laid still for a while, trying to slow his breathing and force his body to rest.

It didn’t help. Every time he shut his eyes, he saw another pair, white-gold like the sun, cold and cruel and glowing like coals beneath a deep green hood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How to write regularly: don't move 2,000 miles away and start graduate school.
> 
> Chapter notes!  
> \- Ah, RWBY character names, my greatest love and my worst enemy. I've talked about how I like to do color/fairytale refs in my own way, but here are the references if you didn't spot them:  
> \- Titania Azure: The Blue Fairy from Pinocchio  
> \- Pippa Last-Name-Not-Appearing-In-This-Fic: Pippi Longstocking  
> \- Sita Saffron: saffron is a shade of yellow. Its extract also has a few herbal benefits: http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-844-saffron.aspx?activeingredientid=844  
> \- I hoped you laughed at the image of Jaune throwing a juice box mid jump-scare. If you didn't, that's okay, because I did it for you.  
> \- If this sounds like it was written by someone who has no hacking experience, that's true. In my defense tho, Jaune never was said to be a pro hacker in canon, only good enough at falsifying records. I figured at the very least, he'd know enough computer skills to be able to insert a fake record into Beacon's system that got him accepted to the school, so meddling with a hospital system wasn't too challenging. But then also, everything in this show and world and fic is fake, so DEAL WITH IT  
> \- Everything about Atlas culture is entirely from my noggin. I haven't watched the World of Remnant country vids and I never plan to. Sorry, RT, ya gave me too little too late.  
> \- Everything about aura battle methods and medical science is also from me. You know the adage: have ill-explained soul-powered magical battle system, will invent real techniques for it in fic.
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed, and hope I can get the next one done a little sooner :x


End file.
